Author Archives: energyskeptic

Fantasyland 3. History of increasing craziness of U.S. religion from 1517 to 1800

Posted on August 6, 2018 by

Preface. In another post about critical thinking, “What percent of Americans are rational?”, I list the results of 10 polls about what Americans believe. Here are the questions about Christianity.  When there’s more than one figure, they’re from different polls: … Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking and Scientific Literacy, Human Nature, Religion | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Fantasyland Part 2. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History.

Posted on August 4, 2018 by

Preface. This is the second of nine parts about the book “”Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire.  A 500-Year History”, mostly the introduction. Links to the 9 parts of this book review:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … Continue reading →

Posted in Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking and Scientific Literacy, Human Nature, Religion | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Fantasyland Part 1. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History.

Posted on August 2, 2018 by

Preface. This a review of the “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire.  A 500-Year History”. If you want to understand what’s wrong with America, and be highly entertained at the same time, this is the book for you, one of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Collapse of Civilizations, Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking and Scientific Literacy, Human Nature, Religion, Social Disorder | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Peak Oil, Coal and Natural gas in China

Posted on July 31, 2018 by

Preface. Below are excerpts from 2 articles.  You may want to read Tverberg’s article here since I left out the charts and included just a few excerpts. Some key points: The world needs growing energy supply to support the world … Continue reading →

Posted in EROEI Energy Returned on Energy Invested, Peak Coal, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Oil | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Peak Oil, Coal and Natural gas in China

Richard Heinberg: Energy and Authoritarianism

Posted on July 28, 2018 by

Preface. Heinberg wrote this a year ago. Brilliant and well structured, he conveys as much in this article as many books, and consolidates what must be many years of research. But Heinberg is not the only one to wonder if … Continue reading →

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Rising Sea Levels – What to do?

Posted on July 10, 2018 by

Preface. I first published this in June 2014, but thought I’d re-update it now that $2.5 million is going to be spent by Resilient by Design on 10 teams to come up with solutions for rising sea levels.  They failed … Continue reading →

Posted in Sea Level Rise, Transportation Infrastructure | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Book review: the politics of California’s central valley levees

Posted on July 7, 2018 by

Preface. This is a book review of Robert Kelly’s “Battling the Inland Sea”.  But it is much more than that, better than any book I know if explaining the human nature of “conservatism vs liberalism”.  It drives me nuts that … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Book review: the politics of California’s central valley levees

Robert Rapier: Oil demand is growing, not shrinking. There is no peak oil demand in sight.

Posted on July 4, 2018 by

[ Yes, this article was published 10 months ago, but with all the attention to fake news today, I thought it would be worthwhile pointing out that peak demand is propaganda, not based on facts. Since the goal of fake … Continue reading →

Posted in Dependence on Oil, Electric Vehicles, Other Experts, Peak Oil, Transportation | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Korowicz: A study of global system collapse

Posted on July 1, 2018 by

Preface. I’ve extracted about half of Korowicz’s paper, left out the references, math, charts, and tables, so you might want to read the original document yourself. This is a great explanation – one of the best – of the intertwined … Continue reading →

Posted in Cascading Failure, Critical Thinking, David Korowicz, Interdependencies, Liebig's Law, Social Disorder, Society, Supply Chains | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Why world leaders are terrified of water shortages

Posted on June 28, 2018 by

Preface. The article blow shows how water crisis in Yemen and Syria led to civil war, mass migration, roadblocks by angry citizens, water riots, increased dengue fever as people hard water, and 1 million refugees fleeing to Europe.  Egypt also … Continue reading →

Posted in Caused by Scarce Resources, Drought & Collapse, Mass migrations, Middle East, Social Uprising, Starvation, Water | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment